ok, here's that reply a wrote over the weekend. i didn't send it then, because i was hoping this thread would end. but i probably should have, because it might have prevented some of the unnecessary and unproductive drift on this thread. anyway, here it is, unedited, so sorry if it hits some points that were later repeated in the thread as it developed. -bowerbird ************************************************************************* walter said:
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
interesting, because i use that same expression about someone else. except i note that he is a _hyperactive_ clock, and is therefore correct about 10 times per day. except he never knows if he's right or wrong.
The bird is right when he says that the iPhone put the the web in our pockets in the sense that it, just like the iPod before it, had almost next to nothing that was new in terms of technical capabalities, but through extremely clever packaging made those techincal capabilities interesting to the masses.
well... except that's not what i said, not what i said at all, not even close to what i said, not even on the same planet. (perhaps walter is on the same planet as david, i dunno.) there were indeed mp3 players before the ipod came about. so if you think of the ipod as an mp3 player, then you might just come to the conclusion that the ipod was "nothing new". but that would be a stupid conclusion. what the ipod did was it married the hardware to software, in the form of the itunes store, which made the _purchase_ of digital songs slick and easy, transforming the industry... the software also made it easy to rip your entire collection from the physical c.d. form to the digital ipod form, which was another vitally important piece of the puzzle that most of the other hardware companies had overlooked entirely... (and don't bother telling me that it was _possible_ to do it with other brands; the whole point is apple made it _easy_. other people aren't masochists like you, so they don't like to power through the pure pain of technology like you do.) and let us not forget that apple creates beautiful products. sure, they're overpriced. but apple is smart enough to know that overpricing can help you as much as it hurts you, _if_ you are capable of delivering the highest-quality experience, and apple is, because they actually work on that experience... apple cares about the interaction of a person with a product, and their attention to detail in this matter makes 'em special. and yes, it certainly helps that apple has a lot of money to spend on advertising. heck, they kept billboard companies alive during the first half of the last decade, they sure did... in a nutshell, apple made the mp3 player people wanted to buy. and then they did the same thing when it came to the iphone... they reworked the smart-phone _entirely_, from top to bottom. they realized that display-size was all-important, so they made the display the full phone face, relegating buttons to software... they made that display a touch-screen, and then programmed an operating system that enabled an interface based on finger touch. and once we saw how it _should_ have been done from the start, we knew it instinctively and immediately, and everything changed. to call this "clever packaging" _could_ be considered an insult, except that it's just so brain-dead _stupid_ that it becomes an indication that the person using the phrase might just be insane. or be suffering from a very high fever. (do you feel ok, walter?) it took a lot of hard work and some very intelligent engineering to make a touch interface for a smart-phone, but apple did it... and people stood in line to buy it, stood in line for _months_... and apple packed plenty of other goodies into that little package, enough so app developers could build hundreds of thousands of useful and entertaining tools, and a whole bunch of fart apps too. moreover, apple negotiated a deal with a greedy-assed carrier to get unlimited bandwidth, precisely because they knew that their offer of "the internet in your pocket" was a _sincere_ one, one that people would actually _use_, and they were looking to protect their customers from the customary carrier rape charges. yeah, sure, some phones had "internet" checked on a feature-list before the iphone came along, but none of those phones had the kind of browser that the iphone has, or gave the same experience. they were confined to this mickey-mouse "mobile web" that had mickey-mouse text menus that were reminiscent of the 1970s... meanwhile, apple invented an interface that was so intuitive that people learned it by watching 30-second television commercials. and yes, it was a good thing that apple had lots of money so they could run lots of those commercials, and run them lots of times... but believe me, if you don't have the goods to back up your ads, you'd just be throwing away your money by running those ads... apple had the goods to back up their ads. apple is often first, but being first is not important to apple... what is important to apple is that they be the one that _lasts_. -bowerbird